Printing the Image - Guilt Trip Edition
It all happened towards the end of June (yes, the blog posts are a few weeks behind on posting - I like to have some in the can just in case I get busy at work and don’t have time to write something up for y’all, wouldn’t want to disappoint). Ann and I weren’t sure what we wanted to watch on tv, so we reverted to the fall-back, which is to see if any of our favorite folks have posted anything on YouTube. Well, there it was, a headline that caught our eye, “How to keep your printer in good health.” To be honest, there were only a few things he said that we didn’t already know (the best of which is, if you have a clogged nozzle or two, run another nozzle check and if it’s still clogged, wait to run another one an hour or two later to let the chemicals in the ink loosen things up; and for heaven’s sake, don’t run multiple print head cleanings - you’re only wasting expensive ink). He did say something that made the guilt devil on my shoulder say, “Dan, you should listen to him.” Basically, he said every few weeks we should definitely be running a print or two through the machine (he does weekly nozzle checks, and makes sure he prints ever few weeks to boot). Definitely print once per month The guilt devil kept nagging me, so I made print copies of some of the images from the Sweden trip and decided to . . . run some ink through the printer. And yes, the print devil has disappeared.
Ann wasn’t quite ready to pick trip images for printing, so the burden fell on me. Fortunately, I’ve roughly worked up images for the blog and there were several I wanted to return to, in part to see how they might print after a bit more development. Nothing was what I consider superb, but that’s ok, there were a few images worth printing and since I was going to print the images on 8.5 x 11 paper, it wasn’t like I was going to break the bank if the prints didn’t turn out well.
I might as well just go through them in the order they were photographed during the trip. The first image is a variation on the one I used on the blog post. That image was photographed at f1.2, which meant that there was a very shallow depth of field (areas that are in focus). I’d made several different versions of the image while photographing it, using different depth-of-fields because you never quite know what will be the best. What bothered me about the image used for the original blog post was that the branches extending in front of and behind the main branches were quite blurry when you looked at them up close. I wanted them a bit more in focus, but still wanted the cliff in the distance behind the tree out of focus. I wound up using the image shot at f4.0. On the print, the tree and its branches appear sharp (sharp enough) and the background is blurred. Precisely the effect I wanted.
I was also pleased with how the colors rendered in the print. I was using my favorite Red River Palo Duro Soft Gloss Rag paper, so the fact that the print has a life to it wasn’t a surprise. In fact, I’m generally pleased with how all the prints turned out, even the one that needs a bit more work (already done).
I was quite curious about how the second print would turn out because, on screen, there is something unreal about the image. It almost seems painterly. Well, the print does not come across that way. Everything looks natural and, to use a word, right. The image conveys the sense of light filtering into the landscape that I was hoping to capture and the image has a presence.
As you can see, I went for a bit of variety in my image selection. I feel like I’m still getting a feel for that new 40 mp sensor in the X-T5 and the images I took one afternoon on the lakeside seemed to offer a somewhat different test. I settled on a more conventional image, in part to see how the blues and yellows rendered, and in part to see how the sensor resolved the reeds in the water. The print passes with flying colors on both tests.
The fourth image was a test of contrast. The original raw image from this location had way too much contrast to it, which is often the problem with photographing in woodland when it’s sunny out. While I wanted to keep a sense of a well sunlit scene, I didn’t want it to seem overly stark, so it took a lot of development work (especially to the shadow sides of the rocks to the left) to give the lighting in the image a balanced feel. Fortunately, again, the print retains those qualities that I was working towards and felt I’d achieved in the final version on the monitor (thank goodness for calibrating your monitors and the use of ICC profiles to create soft proofs).
What I particularly appreciated was the fact that, despite the relatively small size for a landscape print, the print retains that sense of depth and a path that leads the viewer into the farthest rocks and beyond.
Ann particularly enjoys the next image, which again is drastically different than the others. The print retains the subtle details surrounding the window to let you know exactly what it is, but then you’re confronted with the shadows and the colors within the shattered window that leave you wondering precisely what is beyond.
It was certainly one of those images that leaves you uncertain as you’re making it, and equally uncertain about how it might print. Fortunately, this time it all worked.
I wish I could say the same about the final image. The print itself is fine, particularly the water. It turned out the way I’d hoped in the print. For me, the problem is the boat, or more particularly, the white top deck of the boat and the white rope. They are not blown out (I know that from Lightroom data), but there’s not enough there to make it feel substantive. Perhaps it’s the fiberglass and nylon of the materials, but I suspect I may be working on this image a bit more to see if I can get a print to feel like it’s a real surface instead of a white blank.
As I said, overall I’m pleased with the prints. They retained many of the qualities that led me to photograph them in the first place and the qualities that appear on the computer screen. The latter especially is not always the case.
So for now, the devil is off my shoulder and Ann and I have a few weeks to work on the next printing the image post! Just have to make sure it happens before that little bugger returns.